Warren treasurer calls Fouts remark disgusting,' vulgar'

Warren Mayor James Fouts’ apology in front of hundreds of people during a National Day of Prayer observance this month wasn’t the only time he expressed regret for comments he made during two secretly recorded phone conversations.

In a separate act of contrition, Fouts met privately with another elected official — Treasurer Carolyn Kurkowski Moceri — for his criticism of her that included a vulgar remark.

The phone calls were recorded by a mayoral appointee who was on the line with Fouts. In a profanity-laced tired, Fouts angrily blamed some political headaches on two former city employees. The appointee gave the recordings to Michigan State Police. Detectives investigated whether the mayor may have violated any laws including malicious use of a telecommunications device.

Advertisement

After reviewing the police findings, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office concluded Fouts committed no legal wrongdoing because the two Warren ex-workers who were the subject of his wrath were not participants in the phone conversations.

In one of the recorded calls, the mayor abruptly turns from the subject of the City Council’s questions about transfers of money, to the treasurer.

The mayor than made a sexually explicit remark in reference to Moceri’s work.

Moceri said her 17-year-old daughter was the first in the family to hear a television news report on April 25 referring to a “lewd” remark by the mayor.

The next day, Moceri walked from her second-floor office at Warren City Hall, down the hall to the Mayor’s Office. She had words in mind — but abruptly changed her mind when she reached the public counter and turned around.

Moceri said she later obtained a copy of the recording from a friend, and was stunned.

“Very disgusting,” she said. “Very sexual. Vulgar.”

Moceri and her husband had a family meeting with their daughter and 20-year-old son and told them the specific remark.

“I couldn’t look at my son in the face. I whispered it into my daughter’s ear,” she said. “What I was deathly afraid of was the Internet and blogs and (them) hearing it there instead of hearing it from me first.”

Fouts phoned Moceri after the National Day of Prayer observance on May 2 and asked her to come to his office, the treasurer said. She declined, and said he could come to her department.

“He said he was very wrong and inappropriate for what he said,” Moceri said in an interview with The Macomb Daily. She said the mayor shook her hand “and looked me square in the eyes and apologized to me.”

“In all the years I have known Jim, he was very controlled in what he said. He apologized three or four times,” she said. “I told him, ‘I will take your word, as a mayor and a gentleman.’

“A lot of people have told me I should have acted more defensively.”

Moceri, a former councilwoman, said Fouts told her she is the first politician he has apologized to. She said he brought up that some people are considering a run for the treasurer’s post in the 2015 city elections and vowed to not endorse those who already have asked him for his endorsement if they file candidacy.

Moceri said she didn’t record the conversation.

Reached for comment Friday, Fouts repeatedly told the newspaper he poorly chose words during the taped conversation in a fit of anger.

“I am profoundly humiliated and embarrassed about it,” he said. “I was angry and said a lot of things that I deeply regret and am embarrassed about.

“I’m not justifying it. People do things in a moment of anger and frustration,” the second-term mayor said. “I deeply regret the unfortunate choice of words and phrases not meant literally.”

Mirroring his commentary to 700 people who attended the non-denominational National Day of Prayer event outside City Hall, Fouts called the recording of his conversation a violation of his privacy. But on Friday, he charged that it was done maliciously by political opponents striving to detract attention from his administration’s accomplishments and hoping to ruin his re-election chances.

“This was high-tech terrorism,” he said. “This is dirty tricks. It is McCarthyism at the highest level.”

Fouts, a retired government teacher in the Warren Consolidated School district and no stranger to controversy in a political career that has included 26 years on the City Council, said his supporters are still behind him. Some, he said, were surprised to learn that Michigan law permits a person who is part of a phone conversation to record it without the other person’s knowledge.

“It ought to be changed,” he added.

According to the mayor, some of his backers have suggested he fire the appointee who recorded the conversation. Asked why he hasn’t terminated that at-will worker, Fouts said that’s his choice. He declined to elaborate.

Meantime, Fouts also blasted the newspaper for pursuing the brief Moceri aspect of his secretly recorded conversation.